Miami Heat president Pat Riley: ‘We will rebuild quick’

Miami Heat President Pat Riley watching from the stands during the trophy ceremonies of the Eastern Conference Final between the Miami Heat and the Indiana Pacers, Monday June 03, 2013, at American Airlines Miami.(Bill Ingram/Palm Beach Post)

Even after a 9-20 start to the season, Pat Riley is optimistic about the Heat’s future.

The Heat president admits the organization is in the middle of a rebuild, but a rebuild that he believes can get done quickly because of the organization’s financial flexibility and young core.

“We’re dealing with that word that you hate to use — that we have to rebuild,” Riley told WQAM’s Joe Rose on his radio show Wednesday morning. “But we will rebuild quick. I’m not going to hang around here for three or four years selling this kind of song to people in Miami. We have great, great fans. They’re frustrated. They’ve been used to something great over the last 10 years and so right now we’re taking a hit. I think we can turn this thing around. … You can use that word rebuild. But we’re going to do it fast.”

With a first-round pick this season and a good amount of cap space this summer, the Heat will be able to add to the roster this offseason. Pair that with Miami’s current young core — Hassan Whiteside, Justise Winslow, Josh Richardson and Tyler Johnson — and Riley is confident things will turn around quickly.

“You go back and you look at it, we’re in a reubild with young players that we’re familiar with and we have five or six guys that we really like,” Riley said. “They will form a nucleus, two or three them. Tyler Johnson got 32 points coming off the bench. Hassan had 32 and 15 last night. We have some very good young players. Justise Winslow and Josh Richardson, they have been thwarted with their injuries. Justise missed [16] games. Josh missed seven weeks with an MCL. So, they’re a little bit behind. But we love our young core. And what we have is flexibility. And you need flexibility in this league to be able to move quickly. You can’t get paralyzed by the cap or not being able to make room and being able to trade players. I think the No. 1 asset that we have right now is our flexibility moving forward.”

The Heat are currently the third-worst team in the Eastern Conference ahead of just the Philadelphia 76ers and Brooklyn Nets. But unlike the 76ers and the Nets who have each been outscored by an average of eight points per game this season, the Heat are playing in a lot of close games.

Miami has been outscored by 3.2 points per game. Six of the Heat’s 20 losses have come by five points or fewer this season.

“Obviously right now we’re all a little bit disappointed with our record,” Riley said. “But I mean this — this is not old coach speak or just trying to put a positive slant on things — but I’m really proud of this young team and these guys that have come in and they’ve really bought in. They’ve worked hard. We’re going through some absolute, I think, important growing pains. We hate to talk about it in professional basketball. I would say this: this team there’s five wins. We’ve been in 13 close games and there’s at least five more wins in this team that would put us at .500. We lost last night in a double-overtime game we probably should have won.”

Along with a bunch of close losses, injuries have hurt Miami. 13 Heat players (including Chris Bosh) have combined to miss 115 games due to injuries over the first 29 games of the season.

“I do believe the old excuse in that there have been some injuries for this team that have hurt the continuity finding out about these players,” Riley said. “And so right now it’s tough. I think coach is dealing with it as well as he can. But it’s frustrating for the fans and it’s frustrating for us. But you have to go through it.”

Whiteside is one the two Heat players who has not missed a game due to an injury this season.

And Riley, 71, has been satisfied with Whiteside’s development. Just hours after Whiteside complained about the amount of touches he’s getting late in games, Riley tried to explain the challenge coach Erik Spoelstra is facing in finding ways to get the Heat’s $98 million center the ball.

“He’s a double-double machine. There’s no doubt,” Riley said of Whiteside. “And there’s going to be nights with the triple doubles when you add in the blocked shots. He’s averaging 18 and 19 a game, leading the league in rebounding, shoots 58 percent. I do think that right now Coach Spo is going through the dilemma that I had to go through when you make changes from an offensive philosophy and defensive philosophy to fit your personnel and trying to find ways to get him the ball where he’s not encumbered with a lot of defenders in his face is not that easy in today’s game. So he’s caught in between learning the pick-and-roll game, the straight up post game. We’re 30 games into the year and there’s another 50 games to go. We have somebody who is pretty unique and special.”

When it comes to Winslow, Riley isn’t worried. Even with the 20-year-old shooting 35 percent from the field and 22.6 percent from three this season, Riley is confident Winslow will “find his game.”

“He’s a Udonis Haslem type of player,” Riley said of Winslow. “He’s 6-7 1/2, three position player, he can guard maybe four positions on the court. He’s a defender right now from that standpoint. He’s a rebounder. He makes winning plays, has a winning attitude. Right now, he’s shooting the basketball. He’s going to have to find his game, find his stroke and he will. I don’t think there’s any doubt that will come with his game. If people are concerned about him, they should be concerned in a positive way because he’s only 20 years old.

“We love Justise. It’s just a matter of time. That’s all it is. Having that wrist injury this year was the real deal. It’s [16] games he missed. And because of how he plays and how he lands I think the one thing we’re going to have to teach him is how to fall. Dwyane [Wade] used to hit the floor all the time, but he learned over the years how to fall by not using his hands. There’s a lot of things he’s going to learn in this thing. But we feel very good about him as a winner.”

It’s obvious that the Heat’s slow start has done nothing to erase Riley’s optimistic attitude about the organization’s future.

“We don’t want to keep regurgitating the same things, but we’ve got a lot of young players that are growing that need to step up,” Riley said. “They will emerge. We will find the ones I think over the next six to seven months that will be a part of this team for a long time.”